Great Lakes Foodie » Pasta

Recipe: Warm Pasta Salad with Shrimp

Great Lakes Foodie — Sun, 29 May 2011 15:06:41 +0000

Great weeknight meal. The dish would be just as good without one of the proteins. The combination of the beans and shrimp are excellent…but over the top for those of you cost conscious consumers. If you like, this dish is easily morphed into other flavor combinations. I think some fresh oregano or fresh rosemary would be wonderful in this dish. You could move to the Asian side of the world by substituting rice vinegar for the lemon juice, skipping the mustard, and adding some soy and sesame oil. If you go Asian, why not substitute edamame for the beans!

Level of Difficulty

Easy

Recipe Rating

Pretty Good

Comments

If I make this dish again, I would only change the way the flavors meld.

Once the shrimp is done, place the shrimp and beans in the dressing. Let it sit while you’re cooking the farfalle.

Technorati Tags: Cannellini Bean, Pasta, Shrimp

Pasta with Sage Brown Butter and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Great Lakes Foodie — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:47:57 +0000

A simple dinner was the key tonight before the Oscars. We wanted to have something healthy and quick. Try this dish. Just so happens to be good for you too!

Toast pumpkin seeds and remove from heat. The seeds are toasted when they start moving around a bit on their own and a great, earthy smell comes through. Boil pasta in well-salted water. While pasta is boiling, melt a few tablespoons of butter in a saucepan and add ground sage. (In the summer, I add fresh sage leaves.) At this point, don’t have the butter too hot. Right before draining the pasta, remove about a cup of the liquid the pasta is cooking in. Drain pasta and return to pan. Increase the heat in the butter saucepan. Butter will begin browning as the foam boil-off slows. Be careful, it goes from brown to burnt in a flash. Don’t leave the kitchen for anything! As soon as the butter is browned, pour over the pasta. Add pasta cooking liquid (half at first) and heat until a light sauce is formed and coating the pasta well.

Sprinkle with about a 1/4 cup of Parmesan and half of the pumpkin seeds. Plate and sprinkle half of the remaining pumpkin seeds on top. Serve immediately.

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Technorati Tags: Pasta, Pumpkin Seed, Sage

Quick Pre-Show Meal

Great Lakes Foodie — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 13:16:33 +0000

Last night, we had tickets to see Kathy Griffin….Ms Potty-Mouth herself. In an effort to be there on time so that we could enjoy the show without stress, I made a quick cooking dish for dinner. This recipe comes from Cooking Light Magazine’s “The Enlightened Cook” series. We were both quite pleased with the dish. As all of the bacon lovers would agree, this dish was great because of the crisp bacon bits and bacon flavor throughout. Be sure to use every last bit of fond on the bottom of the pan after frying your bacon for maximum flavor.

Rotini and Cheese

Technorati Tags: Cheese, Pasta

Meatless Monday – Pasta with Garbanzo Beans

Great Lakes Foodie — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:58:29 +0000

I am not one to subscribe to meatless Mondays. However, we had a meatless dish and it happened to be Monday. Sorry if I’ve succumbed to the cliche! This dish was a hit in our home. It was quick, simple and really shows off the flavor of onion, garlic, tomato and cheese. I was surprised how much flavor the tomato paste imparted. The dish was not 0ne of those Americanized soupy spaghetti dishes. Rather, the flavor adhered nicely to the pasta. For a cooking challenge, make your own garbanzo beans. I soaked a pound of beans over the weekend and cooked them on Sunday night before going to bed. The yield was roughly three times what I needed. So, there are two containers of cooked garbanzo beans in the freezer waiting for another recipe. I controlled the salt and am not leaving them sit in a murky, thick liquid. They taste great too!

Technorati Tags: Beans, Meatless Monday, Pasta, Tomatoes

Nice finish to Thanksgiving weekend

Great Lakes Foodie — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 01:17:20 +0000

Today marks the end of a beautiful four-day weekend. It started out a bit rainy last Wednesday evening. It turned out to be sunny and gorgeous. For lunch, I pulled out some leftover rice and decided to make fried rice. I diced carrot, celery, and onion. In a non-stick frying pan, I heated some oil and stir-fried the carrots. I added some grated ginger. The ginger perfumed the room and I added the celery and onion. This took a few minutes. Once complete, I added rice and continued to fry. To finish, I put in some ponzu sauce and dark sesame oil. After a weekend of indulgence, this slightly indulgent meal was definitely much lighter than we’ve had of late. It also made great use of our leftover rice!

For dinner, I pulled out a baked pasta dish I made a while back. I had frozen half of it to ensure we didn’t eat it all in one meal! The dish consisted of mostaccoli pasta, homemade marinara with ground beef and marsala wine. I topped the dish with a bechamel with a hint of nutmeg. This meal was a quick bake after having spent the weekend with family and putting up Christmas decorations. We finally finished decorating the house just before dark. The inside of the house is now complete as is the outside. Beautiful I must say!

Technorati Tags: Pasta, Pasta Sauce, Roasting